Raikkonen fully fit ahead of German Grand Prix

Kimi Raikkonen says he is feeling fully fit ahead of this weekend’s race at the Hockenheimring, after his heavy crash at Silverstone on lap one of the British Grand Prix.

The Finn went off track at turn five and lost control of his car as he re-joined. The impact with the barrier registered at 47g and rib pain forced him to miss the following in-season test.

“I had some pain but it’s all fine,” he said in the FIA driver press conference. “Actually it was in my ribs the most, that’s why I didn’t do the test, but it’s all gone away now.”

When asked if he has had a bigger crash, he replied: “Yeah, probably I have had. Hopefully not too many more but it’s just part of the thing.

“It hurt a little bit but quite often you can have a quite slow accident and get badly hurt, so it’s not about that really, it was just an unfortunate thing. Nothing serious happened. It’s part of the sport.”

He remains hopeful that his 2014 season will improve, after a disappointing first half. “It’s been a difficult year, hopefully it will turn around at some point – it must, it cannot go much longer like this, it’s not fun.

“But this kind of thing has happened to me before and we always managed to turn it around, so I have a strong belief it will turn around. We have to just fix issues and get things as I want and I’m sure we can be back where we should be.”

He added: “I’m sure we can fix them. How fast? I hope quickly but it depends on many things. I have a contract so I’m not worried about that for the future.”

Jack Leslie is a freelance motorsport journalist. He has been part of the Richland F1 team since the very start and made his debut in the F1 paddock for the website at the 2014 Austrian Grand Prix. Jack also writes for Car Throttle and RumbleStripNews, as well as running a popular blog.